I was recently listening to a wonderful sermon on the preeminence of Christ over even the great buildings of the temple in Jerusalem. The Scripture used was the beginning of the Olivet Discourse in chapter 21 of Luke. As with all this man's sermons....Jesus Christ is the center of our hope. The congregation surely must have been awakened after a long week in the troubled world....but then the preacher made a statement that....in my opinion obviously....put everyone back to sleep. He may as well of....spiritually speaking....called for the singing of a lullaby before sending them home.
All of you readers should be not only familiar with but reading through regularly the three.....Olivet Discourses....in Matt 24 & 25 and Luke 21 and Mark 13....and studying it intensely....for it is speaking directly to all of us today....but the reality of the situation today in the church is that we want the conquering Christ....but not the returning Christ.
The pastor said that Jesus could return tomorrow....or in ten years....or in five thousand years. That is pretty much the standard take today in churches on the return of Christ. With that statement he in effect told his listeners that there are no special prayers needed for today.....for Israel....for world war....or for any great delusions or lying signs and wonders that we were warned of in God's Word.
Too often in our churches we run from this conversation. We in evangelicalism have been burned too many times by prophecy teachers giving a date. Those instances my friends....were the workings of Satan for this very purpose....that when veils begin to blow off of our eyes as singles off the roofs in a hurricane....that we will back off from what we should see so very clearly.
I could end this post here but instead I'll give but one glaringly example of warnings that we are ignoring. For nine years straight now....and famously at the end of every single solitary rally....up to and through and after the pandemic....Donald Trump has prophesied greatness and winning winning winning....and that our best is yet to come!
When Jeremiah prophesied that Babylon was going to come back and capture Jerusalem....Jeremiah was even wearing a wooden yoke to demonstrate it....Hananiah broke that wooden yoke and prophesied that in two years Jerusalem would be free of Babylon! That is a false prophet friends! What does Donald Trump have to do before we even consider that he may be a genuine biblical false prophet?
He came down that escalator into the middle of evangelicalism....into the middle of the church....and proceeded to change us into rabid haters of everyone on the other side. What would it take before we would even consider that Trump may be one of the many antichrists....that the Apostle John warned us of.... that would plague the church?
If the Christian today does not know that God's judgment is imminent....indeed already in progress....then they surely have been blinded by something. God is so very clearly showing us that His wrath is sure and it is near....but this man Trump tells us the exact opposite....in spades!
We are not talking to God in our prayers on this....for if we were the prayer would go something like this....."Lord....yes....this man tells us that things are going to be great again....which is the opposite of what Thy word tells us....and yes....he has made us angry....threatening and vengeful and even hateful....the opposite of what we are to be striving to be....but Lord....he makes so much sense!" There is no way out of this folks. We ignored God's warnings of judgments for a half century from men like Billy Graham....and no false prophet can change that.
